Triumph Falls Short For Connolly

The Golden South Classic's Hammer-throw Champ Won But Didn't Set A Personal Best Or National Mark.

May 29, 1994|By Joe Williams of The Sentinel Staff

WINTER PARK — When you are a four-time champion and your top challenger's hammer throw drops more than 50 feet behind yours, sometimes a victory is not enough.

That was the case at the Bert W. Martin Foundation Golden South Classic at Showalter Field Saturday night, when Adam Connolly easily won the championship but was upset at failing to reach two other goals - bettering his personal best and challenging the national high school mark.

Connolly won for the fourth year in a row with a throw of 226 feet, 2 inches, well short of his personal best of 228-4. Connolly, who will compete in the hammer throw at Stanford next year, also fell short of the national high school record of 231-11.

He did, however, dominate the competition. Puerto Rico's Edwardo Hernandez finished second with a distance of 170-9.

Also missing out on what he hoped would be a bid for a personal best, as well as a possible national record, was Seminole High School triple-jumper Andre Scott. Scott won the meet with a distance of 53-4, a jump that came in the preliminaries before rain dampened the runway.

Scott's best jump is 53-7 1/2 , and he had hoped to better the 53-9 1/4 national record.

''I'm not really disappointed. With the weather like it was, I think I did pretty well,'' said Scott, who has signed with Auburn. ''I wish we would have started around 4 p.m. (instead of 6 p.m.) because I jump better in hot weather.

''When it got cloudy it cooled off a little, and when it started raining, the boards got slippery.''

Weather was not a problem for Connolly, the son of four-time Olympian hammer thrower Hal Connolly, but technique may have been.

''I'm really disappointed,'' said Connolly, who was noticeably upset at himself after the competition. ''I wanted to do a P.R. (personal record).

''This is only the third meet this year that I have had a chance to throw the hammer in. I think my main problems were just some technical things. I think I just needed to hold it together more and move up my intensity level. Sometimes, when you get too pumped up, your technique begins to fall apart, and I think that is what happened to me.''

Connolly's two other hammer throw competitions this year were in meets in Rhode Island, the only state that has hammer throw as part of its high school competitions.

In Maryland, Connolly threw the shot put and won the state championship this spring.